In a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, a user equipment (UE) may transmit a sounding reference signal (SRS) to a base station, so that the base station performs an operation such as uplink channel quality estimation based on the received SRS.
In addition, with continuous development of the mobile Internet, low-frequency spectrum resources are increasingly insufficient. To satisfy growing communication rate and capacity requirements, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) incorporates high frequencies with rich frequency resources into a spectrum range used in a next-generation wireless communications system. However, compared with a wireless communications system using a low frequency as an operating frequency, a wireless communications system using a high frequency as an operating frequency has a relatively high transmission loss. In other words, at same transmit power, coverage of a wireless communications system using a high frequency as an operating frequency is far narrower than coverage of a wireless communications system using a low frequency as an operating frequency. Therefore, to enhance coverage of a wireless communications system using a high frequency as an operating frequency, a beamforming technology is introduced in the industry.
In conclusion, in a wireless communications system using a high frequency as an operating frequency, if a UE needs to transmit an SRS, beamforming processing needs to be performed on the SRS. However, because the LTE system uses a low frequency as an operating frequency, when a UE transmits an SRS in the LTE system, beamforming processing is not required. In other words, the prior art has no solution for performing beamforming on the SRS.